


Hanginaround

by wingedbears



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Don't copy to another site, M/M, Moving In Together, Moving On
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-18 02:35:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17572664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wingedbears/pseuds/wingedbears
Summary: Fred moves himself and Archie to Nebraska.





	Hanginaround

Weirdly enough, Nebraska is colder than Vermont. It’s something about the dryness of it all, no trees stopping the wind, the horizon miles and miles away. 

Fred stands on the porch and drinks his coffee, feeling the cold seep into his bones. 

Archie is inside, huffing about schoolwork, about not being near his friends, about anything that has to do with Fred. Fred knows that he did the right thing, pulling Archie out of Riverdale. That town has too many memories, too many ghosts hanging onto them, reaching out with their wispy hands to choke them out. 

Fred packed two duffel bags and shoved Archie in the truck and they left. Archie attempted leaving no less than four times. 

Fred knows it’s not the end of it. Knows Archie, knows himself, that there’s going to be another escape. Knows that Archie is talking to Jughead. 

Knows Jughead has some scheme in the works. 

But Fred doesn’t care. He will take Archie to Canada if he needs to, will work the land there. Or a small cabin, just the two of them, change their names. 

Fred closes his robe and shivers. Sips the last of his coffee and goes in. 

Archie is shouldering his bag and slides a look over to Fred. 

“You okay?” he asks, and it’s real, the question, not courtesy, but it comes out so often the past three months that it sounds too common. 

“I’m okay,” Archie brushes off, and that’s what has been breaking Fred, that Archie won’t talk to him anymore. He has to remember that Archie wasn’t talking to him earlier, it’s just now that he’s clammed up.

Fred’s no stranger to clams, so he sighs, and watches Archie walk out the door, and waits twenty minutes to call the school. The secretary sighs, but informs him that yes, an Archie Andrews has arrived and in first period.

Fred tells her thanks and hangs up.

He calls back at lunch, and at two. 

Until he can trust Archie, until he knows Archie won’t run, then he’s going to call.

He works on a site, the work hard and demanding, but it’s needed to get the groceries on the table.

Archie gets home before Fred, so he never hangs out to shoot the shit with the crew. He’s standoffish, cold, all the things Fred would never think he could be. 

Fred gets home and it snows all night. 

The foreman calls and says the work’s been delayed, and the tv station says the same about school. 

The snow doesn’t stop, so work and school close for the day.

So it’s a surprise when the pounding at the door starts up.

Fred and Archie both get up, and Fred waves Archie back, takes the rifle off the rack by the door before peering through the peephole.

It’s a fisheye view of FP, mad as a wet cat, and Jughead, shivering and stubborn behind him.

“What the hell?” Fred asks, ripping the door open.

“This is where you’ve been?” FP asks, and Fred checks the safety on the rifle, on, nothing in the barrel, before putting it back on the rack. 

Fred grabs FP’s shirt and drags him in, and Jughead stomps in behind, looking for Archie. “What the hell?” Fred asks again, and Jughead and Archie run to each other and embrace, hold each other and let go, disbelieving. Fred looks at Archie. “Archie,” he says, the voice of a pissed off father coming out of his mouth.

“I didn’t tell him dad, I promise!” Archie says.

“He didn’t,” Jughead confirms, standing in front of Archie. “I followed his IP address to the school, and uh…”

Fred narrows his eyes. “Did you hack into the school’s computer system?” he asks, tilting his head. 

“Just to look at attendance records!” Jughead says, raising his hands, like Fred still has the rifle.

Fred realizes his anger is misled, and spins to aim it on FP. “And you drove him here,” he says. 

FP scoffs. “That anyway to treat your guests?”

“I came here with Archie to get out of Riverdale, not to have Riverdale come to us.”

“Well, I came to do the same,” FP says, crossing his arms, daring Fred to say differently. “Jughead doesn’t need to be a gang leader.”

What Fred wants to say: “Since when?”

What Fred actually says: “Boys, can we have a moment?” he asks Archie and Jughead, who nod furiously, not willing to be caught in the crosshairs of this conversation. For now. Archie grabs Jughead’s wrist and drags him up the narrow stairs to his room.

Fred stomps into the kitchen and FP follows closely behind. 

“What are you really doing here?” Fred asks. “Why follow us out of Riverdale, where,” he pauses.

“Where what, Fred? I had it good?” FP laughs sourly. “You left, and the whole town goes to shit. You think I’m not gonna follow you?”

“What are you gonna do? Move in next door?” Fred asks.

FP crosses his arms, “Think I won’t?”

There’s a silence, and Fred knows of the two of them, FP is far more stubborn. 

“Dammit, FP,” he says. “This isn’t high school.”

“No, it’s real. Jughead’s smart enough to be anywhere, gets that from his mom.”

There’s a lot that FP’s not saying. Like how he’s Fred’s foil. 

“Our kids aren’t gonna make it without one another,” FP continues.

“Jughead’s gonna be okay,” Fred says, and he knows that FP is following him on the double meaning here.

FP shakes his head. “You didn’t see him, Fred. He was a mess.”

“I can’t just,” Fred pulls at the hair he has left. “You can’t be here.”

“Then let me support Jughead. Send you money, let him live with you.”

“I can’t let Archie get into anymore trouble,” he says pointing, and before FP can open his mouth to protest, Fred continues “You will contribute to this household. You will take care of Jughead, and of Archie, and if any harm comes to either of them, then I will not hesitate to kick you out and move where you’ll never find us.”

FP smirks. “Good to see you again, Freddy,” he says, and Fred clenches his teeth and grips the counter tight enough to pop his knuckles.

 

FP sleeps on the couch. Jughead bunks on the floor in Archie’s room, and Fred knows that this is a boiling kettle of a situation, but it seems to work.

The first week, FP cleans the house after getting Jughead into school with Archie. 

Then FP cooks dinner, makes their lunches, and occasionally, will make breakfast too.

It’s better than anything Fred can come up with, so he doesn’t fuss except to ask for more green vegetables in their diet.

The next few meals have salads, lima beans (which Archie hates, but Jughead glares him into eating) and snap peas.

FP gets a job the next month, and for a server over at the Denny’s. “It’s no Pop’s,” is all he’ll says on the subject, but once he comes home with a shiner, and Jughead’s shoulders get tight. Fred didn’t notice how much looser he was out under Riverdale’s thumb, how he’s opened to the fact of FP taking care of him.

Fred’s about to bitch him out when FP starts a rant about a girl named Helen, and her now ex-boyfriend coming in to harass her.

“I might get fired,” FP says quietly.

“Who cares,” Jughead says, proud, chin jutting out. “Helen okay?”

“Yeah, she’s at her grandma’s, told her to call me if Jack ever showed up again.” 

FP doesn’t get fired, but does get a warning. “Boss man is after my ass,” he says. He points at Jughead. “Don’t think about it.”

Jughead glares at his cereal, clearly thinking about it. He jabs at the cornflakes and Archie nudges at him to get him to smile.

FP keeps up the weird hours and keeps the house clean somehow, the boys and Fred helping. Fred marvels at it, wonders at the simple to follow instructions that FP leaves for dinner, frozen dinners packed in their fridge.

It’s a few months in when one of the guys on the crew asks him to come out to join them for a beer, and Fred is already shaking his head.

“Naw, man, Andrew’s got a man at home, didn’t you hear?” one of the men jokes, and everyone freezes. Fred’s pissed off, ready to fight.

“Shut up, Otis, good God,” another man, Emmet, says, rolling his eyes. “Better than nobody, which is what you got.” 

Fred invites Emmet over for dinner. 

 

The snow melts slowly in Nebraska, the cold finally shaking off in May, and the whole state smells like tilled earth. 

The boys plead to make a summer trip, and Fred is cautious about it. 

“Please dad?” Archie asks, and Fred sighs, turning to FP to look for support.

FP shrugs. “Why don’t we set up a plan we’re all comfortable with?” he suggests, and Fred is shocked at the sensibility of it.

The boys pack their things in July and head out, and it leaves FP and Fred alone. 

The house seems smaller and larger at the same time without Archie and Jughead running through.

Fred diligently tracks every stop the boys make the first couple of days, and Jughead and Archie are as good as their word, staying far from Vermont, checking in every twelve hours.

The first time they miss the call, Fred panics and calls and calls, hoping nothing happened, while FP is scrubbing his face blurrily. “What?” FP asks, waking up out of a dead sleep.

“They didn’t call,” Fred replies, redialing.

FP pries the phone out of his hand. Puts the speaker on and holds onto Fred’s shaking form when Archie breathlessly answers, “Dad?”

Fred chews him out, feels immediately bad about it.

“Dad, I’m so sorry, we were…” and doesn’t say, and Fred feels dread in his stomach. 

FP stops him before Fred can implode. 

“Hey Archie?” FP says, picking up the phone and turning the speaker off. “Can you put Jughead on?” Then, “Hey kid?”

“Yeah?”

FP has the audacity to _laugh_. “Okay Juggie. Don’t do it again, Fred here is freaked, okay?”

There’s a noise. “Naw, you know how the Andrews men get, all fired up.”

Fred glares. “I mean, we’re mad, but it’ll be okay. Tell Archie that, alright?” FP raises an eyebrow at Fred. Fred nods. “Straight from the horse’s mouth.”

FP hangs up. Looks at the phone for minute before putting it down on the bed stand. “So our kids are sleeping with each other,” he says.

Fred groans. “I knew it,” he says.

“You got a problem with that?” FP asks, sounding weird in the dark room.

“No, just,” Fred shrugs. “It was inevitable, but it snuck up on me.”

“They’re not us, Freddy,” FP says, laying back down. “They got sense.”

“I guess,” Fred replies, squinting at the light from the hallway. “You think you and I would have?” he asks, thanking the dark for hiding his blush.

“If you’d’ve let me,” FP grumbles. Then, “Fred, I’ve got to get up in two hours, I really need to sleep.”

“Right,” Fred says, and slips out of the room.

He has a lot to think about.

 

Fred doesn’t sleep that night, hears FP leave, and gets up and goes through the motions on his shift. 

Emmet pulls him over after work. “Everything okay at home?” he asks.

Fred nods. “Got a lot on my mind,” Fred says. 

“Wanna drink?”

Fred agrees. The local bar is wood paneled, and dirty and honestly could be any bar back home. Emmet buys him a beer, and Fred returns the favor on the next round. There’s a beer, game of pool, and another beer, and Emmet asks if he can see Fred’s phone. 

Fred pulls it out, and slumps against the table, thanking God or whatever deity listening that construction wasn’t happening the next day.

“Hey man,” Emmet says, and Fred looks up, blinking. Right, the phone.

“Yeah, your man’s a little wasted, can you come get him?”

Emmet hangs out, shoving waters in Fred’s face until FP comes in, and walks over, hands in his pockets. 

“Thanks, Emmet,” FP says, and Emmet slaps FP’s shoulder. FP looks at Fred. “Well let’s get you home,” he says, and drags Fred’s ass out of the bar and into the warm air of late June. 

“Home,” Fred says, laughing. “Where’s that?”

“On Dewberry Lane, idiot.”

“FP,” Fred says as soon as he gets in the van. They have a van, because the boys took the truck. “Did you really?”

FP shoots him an amused glare. “Did I really what?” he asks, turning the engine over and pulling the van over the gravel and onto the road. 

“Did you really want me back then?”

FP is quiet, and Fred is a little too tipsy to suss out the meaning of that.

“Let’s get you home, Freddy,” he says after a moment. 

“Not gonna answer me?”

“Not when you know the answer,” FP replies. “Come back and ask me when you’re sober.”

“Okay,” Fred says, satisfied in the moment that he will.

“Okay,” FP repeats, satisfied that Fred won’t.

 

He does.

He waits until the headache passes, sometime in the late afternoon, which is conviently when FP gets home from his shift that day.

FP turns on the shower to wash off the stink of grease, and Fred waits. 

FP is wearing a towel around his waist and looks shocked to see Fred in the hallway. “What the fuck, Fred?” he asks, clutching at the tuck at his waist. 

Fred takes a minute to assess FP, who’s older, who’s filled out, who’s belly is soft, who’s body is covered in dark hair, all the way down to the towel where he’s still holding.

“Did you really?” Fred asks again, and FP’s eyes go wide. His mouth moves, but no words come out. 

“Fred,” FP says, swallowing. “You really wanna poke this nest?”

Fred steps up into FP’s space. “Yes,” he says. He takes a hold of FP’s hand, the one on the towel, and tugs.

FP lets him. The towel falls off, and all of FP is there before Fred. 

“Answer me,” Fred says, voice rough from want.

“Yeah, I did. I do,” FP says. Then, because he’s an idiot: “I’ll pack up,” he says.

Fred kisses him before that thought can go any further.

FP moans, and leans into it, and soon enough they’re in Fred’s downstairs bedroom, learning what it means for them to know each other this way. 

It feels good, too good sometimes, and Fred wonders if he’s the moron for waiting for so long.

FP, after, kisses him softly, and smiles. “Quit thinking Andrews, and call the kids. They’re probably solving another mystery.”

Fred calls them.

He thinks Archie knows, by the tone of his voice, but he sounds happy. 

Fred can relate.


End file.
